Tuesday, December 08, 2009

We intrepid bookmen . . .

At breakfast the other day, my erudite wife -- who happens also to be my only wife -- mentioned having read of a book by the German writer Alfons Schweiggert, titled Das Buch, in which a man literally (or literarily?) becomes a book and suffers the little indignities that we inflict upon our books . . . underlining sentences of, scribbling marginal notes within, dog-earing pages to, that sort of thing, I suppose, for my wife did not specify.

Later that very day, after my regular exercise, as I was enjoying my hard-earned beer and reading more from Holbrook Jackson's The Anatomy of Bibliomania, I came upon Section V in Part XV, titled "Men who become Books: Biblioanthropus Defined," which contains -- among other thingss of similar ilk -- the following Kafkaesque thoughts on a strange form of metamorphosis:

[A] biblio-animism may be at work making books men, men books; and if, on the other hand, as Milton believed, the writer of a poem must himself be a true poem, or as Victor Hugo held, the book is its writer, I perceive no reason to suppose that a bookman may not himself become a book, seeing that we become what we absorb, for, Samuel Butler says, matter which has once been assimilated by any identity or personality, becomes for all practical purposes part of the assimilating personality. (Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania, 328-329)

Quite a coincidence, I'd say, and I'm ready to read this as a sign -- a book, after all, brought my wife and me together -- but a sign of what, exactly? That we are what we read? More so than previously anticipated? Some new, transformative theory to worry about . . .

But what of Schweiggert's bookman? The 'novel' doesn't appear to have been translated into English -- maybe it first needs to obtain citizenship, or at least a "Green Card"? -- but here's Schweiggert's homepage, with useful information if you read German. Note that Schweiggert has written a lot on Franz Kafka, which might or might not have implications for the story of a metamorphosis into some kind of giant book. The literary critic and journalist Hannes S. Macher describes Das Buch as "zwischen Kafka und Krimi," i.e., "between Kafka and detective story."

But I can't find many details on the story itself at Schweiggert's site, nor even an excerpt to whet my appetite for reading it. Has anyone read Das Buch? Perhaps few return once they've opened the book and entered in?

In reading this book, one imagines oneself to be entering into it completely, identifying oneself with "Bibli," and recognizing oneself even as its prisoner. (my loose translation)

"Bibli" is the main character's name, possibly a nickname. Amazon's German site provides more information, revealing that Bibli finds a mysterious book in a flea market, sells all his other books, and devotes himself to this book alone, so much so that he becomes the book itself and thereby passes into the hands of others.

About Me

I am a professor at Ewha Womans University, where I teach composition, research writing, and cultural issues, including the occasional graduate seminar on Gnosticism and Johannine theology and the occasional undergraduate course on European history.
My doctorate is in history (U.C. Berkeley), with emphasis on religion and science. My thesis is on John's gospel and Gnosticism.
I also work as one-half of a translating team with my wife, and our most significant translation is Yi Kwang-su's novel The Soil, which was funded by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea.
I'm also an award-winning writer, and I recommend my novella, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, to anyone interested.
I'm originally from the Arkansas Ozarks, but my academic career -- funded through doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships (e.g., Fulbright, Naumann, Lady Davis) -- has taken me through Texas, California, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, and Israel and has landed me in Seoul, South Korea. I've also traveled to Mexico, visited much of Europe, including Moscow, and touched down briefly in a few East Asian countries.
Hence: "Gypsy Scholar."